L'ATALANTE
*****
France
Jean Vigo's only full-length feature is a poem, a tonic, a precious,
precious thing. A breezy, entrancing love story, with Jean Dasté and Dita
Parlo as naive newlyweds (both of them profoundly sexy in an unassuming
way) embarking upon their non-honeymoon aboard his shabby, cluttered
barge. The brash, uncouth and just generally priceless Michel Simon is the
first mate.
It's impossible to determine the precise elements that
combine into the film's dreamy, intoxicating pull. But Vigo was certainly
onto something with all this combining of purposely, charmingly clumsy
naturalism and unshowy but piercing surrealism. It's as close as any piece
of art could hope to get to evoking the rich, bracing gust of human
desire, of sensuality and longing.
dir: Jean Vigo
wr: Jean Vigo, Albert Riéra, Jean Guinée
ph: Louis Berger, Boris Kaufman, Jean-Paul Alphen
ed: Louis Chavance
m: Maurice Jaubert
ad: Jean-Louis Bompoint, Francis Jourdain
cast: Jean Dasté, Dita Parlo, Michel Simon, Gilles
Margaritis, Louis Lefebvre, Maurice Gilles, Raphaël Dilligent,
Jacques Prévert, Pierre PrévertTHE BLACK CAT
**½
CHAPAYEV
***½
USSR
A long time ago, this biopic of a legendary Red Army commander was greeted
with the kind of adulation normally reserved for Eisenstein. It hasn't
aged terribly well, but it's notable in its portrait of a Russian war hero
as more fallible (and less statue-like) than is ordinary for this period
and the battle sequences are as accomplished as you'd expect.
dir: Georgi Vasilyev, Sergei Vasilyev
cast: Boris Babochkin, Leonid Kmit, Varvara Myasnikova, Boris
Blinov, Illarion Pevtsov, Stepan Shkurat, Vyacheslav Volkov
THE GAY DIVORCEE
**** THE GODDESS
**½
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
*****
MAN OF ARAN
****½
UK
Flaherty's majestic documentary of the coastal community of the
isolated Aran islands and their dependence on the ferocious sea.
Parts of it are obviously staged, though that doesn't diminish its impact.
Flaherty dabbles with self-conscious avant-gardism through some of the editing
techniques he employs, though he retains at all times the basic human interest in
the story of courageous, hard-working people surviving day to day in a
daunting, terrifying landscape.
dir/ph/ed: Robert J. Flaherty
m: John Greenwood
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
****
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THE
MAN WITH TWO FACES
***
USA
A routine suspense melodrama, chiefly distinguished by the rare chance it
affords Edward G. Robinson to play pompous. He excels at it.
dir: Archie Mayo
cast: Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Ricardo Cortez, Mae Clarke,
Louis Calhern, John Elderidge, A.S. Byron, Henry O'Neill
THE MERRY WIDOW
****
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
***
OUR
DAILY BREAD
**½
USA
Comfortably among the worst well-intentioned pictures ever made, King
Vidor's labour of love has the morbid fascination reserved for the most
brutally misconceived of solemn sermons. Vidor's social conscience blinded
him against any notions of artistic integrity, thus allowing him to found
this paean to communal living upon an infantile plot and some
astonishingly stilted acting (over-enthusiastic leading man Tom Keene is
particularly beguiling to watch). Along with the cartoonish communist
ideals however, Vidor also borrowed some montage techniques from the
Russians, so he caps off an hour of crude didacticism with a famous
irrigation sequence, the slick execution of which makes the slack-jawed
simple-mindedness of everything leading up to it that much more
confounding.
dir: King Vidor
cast: Tom Keene, Karen Morley, John Qualen, Barbara Pepper, Addison
Richards, Harry Holman, Billy Engle, Henry Hall, Ray Spiker
THE RICHEST GIRL IN THE WORLD
**½
USA
The richest girl in the world poses as her own secretary to test the love
of a prospective husband.
The premise sounds as if it was conceived for a screwball comedy, but
it's played straight, so it basically comes off as soap opera. Hopkins
is barely allowed to breathe, and her co-stars look like they never
learned how. A contemporary version would very much suit the likes of
Freddie Prinze Jr. or Lindsay Lohan.
dir: William A. Seiter
wr: Norman Krasna
cast: Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Henry Stephenson,
Reginald Denny
THE SCARLET EMPRESS
*****
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
****
THE THIN MAN
****
THREE
SONGS OF LENIN
****½
USSR
A wide-eyed deification of Lenin, less impressive for Vertov's horndom
over the deceased ideologue than for his mastery of montage and
composition. On a purely visceral level it's a thrilling piece of cinema.
dir/ed: Dziga Vertov
ph: Mark Magidson, Bentsion Monastyrsky, Dmitri Surensky
TRIUMPH OF THE WILL
***½
TWENTIETH CENTURY
****
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